Enza Zaden Uk Ltd

Enza Zaden Uk is the first and hence the oldest of Enza’s sale subsidiaries, founded in November 1985. The company was established in rented offices in Newton Abbot Devon and in 1985 moved offices into bigger and improved offices. During 2003 another more central location was purchased by Enza Zaden Uk with relocation planned at the end of July 2004. The new site is in the Vale of Evesham, it comprises of a 10 acre field (where we will continue testing our outdoor varieties in a commercial situation) and a newly completed building housing the offices and seed storage facilities.

Enza Zaden Uk Ltd was built on the success of it’s glasshouse lettuce varieties and this breeding programme but now has spread it’s wings to encompass development work into the tomato, sweet pepper and outdoor lettuce crops. We will continue working in this wider range of crops but will add other crops like leeks, cauliflower and herbs to our portfolio.

One of our major successes has been with the very successful introduction of tomato’s on the vine. We started this trend in the Uk with the varieties Aranca and Campari. Both of these varieties are now internationally successful and we are adding new varieties to the list annually.

The Uk market for vegetables has changed radically over the last few years. Fewer, bigger growers now focussing on 12 months supply from all over Europe and in some cases beyond Europe. All of this development is lead by the requirements of the major supermarket chains. In this climate of change the Enza Zaden Uk team needs to keep a close watch on the developments and feed back the correct information to it’s team of breeders to select the varieties most suited to match these requirements. Hence the move to our new site to enable the team of Enza Zaden Uk to continue this work as effectively as possible.